


Flagrante

by Whedonista93



Series: Spooky Season 2020 [31]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Prequel, Rule 63, fem!newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27341830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whedonista93/pseuds/Whedonista93
Summary: A prequel to 'Revelio'“You should marry each other,” Theseus declares.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Series: Spooky Season 2020 [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1958881
Comments: 10
Kudos: 188





	Flagrante

_ Theseus, _

_ My portkey arrives at 11 in the morning, local time, just outside your Hogsmeade Village. I look forward to the coming visit. _

_ Percival _

Newt clutches the parchment in her hand, bouncing excitedly on her toes and resisting the urge to check her battered old pocket watch again. Finally she hears the telltale  _ whoosh _ of a portkey and turns toward the gaggle of people arriving. She stands on her toes, trying to find - oh, there he is. She bounds up to the young man from the photograph in Thes’ room, then freezes, realizing she’s going to have to explain herself.

Percival stumbles ever so slightly when the portkey lands, but rights himself quickly before he adjusts his grip on his traveling trunk and scans the small crowd awaiting the arrival of the portkey. He frowns when he doesn’t spot Theseus. Before he can start to imagine why his friend isn’t there to greet him, a young woman comes up to him determinedly, only to freeze when she looks up at him.

She’s a few years younger than him. Her fair skin is muttered with freckles, her reddish curls are trying their damndest to escape the braid she’s twisted them into, and her green eyes are a rather intriguing shade. A bowtruckle pokes its head out from the collar of her robes. He quirks an eyebrow at her and red suffuses her pale cheeks.

Percival Graves, Newt decides, is… appealing. The phrase “tall, dark, and handsome” comes to mind. She feels herself blush when he raises a dark brow at her.

Newt sticks her hand out awkwardly. “You’re Percival, right? I’m Artemis, Theseus’ sister. You can call me Newt. Everyone does.”

Theseus’ sister, Percival decides, is charming, in an awkward sort of way.

He takes the hand she’s holding out between them and shakes it firmly. “I am Percival. Charmed to meet you.”

Newt’s blush spreads to her ears. “Right, er, I have a confession to make. Thes doesn’t know you’re coming. I’m quite good at his handwriting, you see, and Mum and I thought it would be a great surprise to have you out to visit, but we thought it might be a bit awkward for one of us to invite you. So, er, yeah…”

Definitely charming, Percival decides, and tucks her hand into his elbow instead of releasing her. “I would have come regardless of who sent the invitation,” Percival tells her.

Newt smiles, relief shining through her eyes. “Wonderful. Um, we can use the floo at Hog’s Head.”

Percival can’t help but smile at the young woman. “Let’s go see if we can’t surprise your brother, hm?”

* * *

“I’ve hardly even begun my advanced Auror training,” Percival laments. “And they want me to drag some poor witch into the madness?”

“They want grandkids,” Theseus teases.

Percival scowls. “I hate you.”

“You love me,” Theseus argues. “Besides, I’m only teasing. They only said marriage,” he frowns. “They did only say marriage, right? Not heirs?”

Percival takes a swig of his drink and waves vaguely. “Just marriage. But they made it a condition of my bloody inheritance. I have to wed an appropriate witch or forfeit my inheritance. Do you know what that would mean for me, Theseus?”

Theseus nods seriously. “You know I do.”

“Mercy Lewis, I won’t even be able to afford my apartment after this summer without that inheritance,” Percival lets his head thunk to the table. “And what the hell is an “appropriate witch” anyway?”

“At least you can go to the dorms,” Newt mutters, interjecting in the conversation for the first time.

Percival turns his head enough to glare at Newt (not something he does often). “I will not make it a single day without hexing some idiot and getting expelled.”

Newt shrugs. “You’re smart, Percy. You’ll figure something out.”

At her soft tone, the anger drains out of Percival. “What’re you so down in the dumps about?”

Theseus snickers. “Same thing you are.”

Percival raises his head. “What?”

Newt mumbles something incoherent into her drink.

Theseus’ amused expression fades and he rolls his eyes. “Our father’s parents, the ones whose inheritance Newt lives off of, apparently put a clause in their will, after Newt’s… er, incident at Hogwarts. If she doesn’t make a marriage alliance with a suitable bloodline within a year of reaching her majority, she loses it all.”

Percival blinks once, twice, opens his mouth, closes it again, opens it again, and eventually erupts into a tirade against the Scamander ancestors containing some rather creative and vulgar turns of phrase that turn Newt a rather eye-catching shade of red.

Theseus is laughing so hard he’s crying by the end of it. Suddenly, he stops and claps. “You’re both dolts, and I am bloody brilliant.”

Newt eyes him warily and edges behind Precival’s shoulder, more than a bit worried at the mad gleam in her brother’s eye.

“You should marry each other,” Theseus declares. 

Newt goes rigid.

Percival blinks. “That’s… actually not a terrible idea.”

Newt scoots far enough away to look up at him with wide eyes. “Percy?”

Percival shrugs. “Think about it. Words like ‘appropriate’ and ‘suitable’ are damnably simple when it comes down to wizarding contracts.”

“Blood purity,” Newt practically spits.

Percival nods. “Unfortunately so. The Scamanders are old blood. Powerful blood. And the Graves are one of America's Original Twelve. We both have the blood degree to satisfy the contracts our families have placed upon us. I won’t expect you to stop galivanting about the world with your bloody case, and you won’t try to impede my career…”

“So… we marry simply to fulfill our family’s demands, and continue on with our lives as they are?”

“Essentially, yes.”

Theseus waves his drink through the air. “I’ve seen both contracts… you don’t even have to tell your family who you’ve married. You just have to do it.”

Percival looks down at Newt. “What do you say, my dearest Newt? Marry me?”

* * *

Those still in their basic training courses are left to it, but those in the final stages of advanced courses, like Theseus and Percival, are sent to the battlefields.

They’re entrenched a mere fields length from the dark lord’s forces, battling to see who’s shields will hold longer, when Newt apparates inside the wards.

“The bloody hell are you doing here?” Theseus demands, stalking up to his sister.

“Your last letter said you were having trouble with the dragons,” Newt answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Without waiting for Theseus to answer, Newt drops her case at his feet, briefly reaches out to squeeze Percival’s arm as she passes him, then lets herself right into the dragon enclosure. By dawn, every single one of the beasts is literally eating out of the palm of her hand. By the next nightfall, all but one of them is allowing her to ride them. She sleeps in a dragon nest through most of the night. When the first light of the next dawn starts breaking on the horizon, she takes the whole lot of them into the sky, reining dragon fire and curses down on the shields of the enemies, leaping wildly through the air from one dragon to the next when curses start flying too close to her.

There aren’t many witches and wizards of the dark lord’s forces to surrender by the time the sun has fully risen.

Newt submits graciously to the backslapping and handshakes that greet her back on the ground, laughing when Theseus picks her up and swings her through the air before Percival reaches her. Percival, for his part, tucks her right into his chest and drags her back into the dragon enclosure, away from the celebrating wizards surrounding her. Miraculously, the dragons let him. Theseus thinks he’s likely the only one who notices that they’re both trembling.

It’s several hours before they emerge again, and Newt looks better - calmer - but Percival looks haunted.

Theseus corners his best friend in a dark, secluded corner of their camp late that night. “You love her,” he accuses.

Percival looks, for the first time in Theseus’ memory, like he wants to run - flee instead of fight. But just as suddenly as the expression comes, it goes. Percival heaves a weary sigh and falls back against a tree, exhaustion and resignation bleeding into every line of his being.

He tilts his head back, looking up at the stars, then forces himself to meet Theseus’ eyes. “How could I not, Theseus? And watching her, today, fighting a whole battalion of dark wizards, leaping through the air off of and onto fucking dragons... Mercy Lewis, the thought we were were both going to die before I ever got to hold her again…” He trails off.

Theseus reaches out and squeezes the other man’s shoulder. “Tell her,” he suggests.

* * *

_ Newt, _

_ Percy’s been hurt. Mercy Clinic in New York City. _

_ Thes _

Newt is gripping the bit of parchment in her hand so hard the ink has stained her palm. She can’t even form a coherent thought as she stumbles into the MACUSA lobby that her emergency portkey had spat her out into. Fortunately, Theseus is waiting for her.

He grips her shoulders, steadying her. He nods to the parchment in her hand. “Sorry to be so blunt,” he winces. “But I knew you’d come.”

“Percy-”

Theseus tucks her under his arm and leads her out into the street. “One of the dolts in his program… Merlin, I don’t even know how this idiot made it this far. He wasn’t paying attention to the curse he was casting and it hit Percival.”

Newt shudders against his side, but stays silent until the moment Theseus leads her into Percival’s room. At the sight of him against he stark sheets, gaunt and pale and sweating and rasping, Newt nearly chokes on a ragged sob.

She spins on Theseus. “What the bloody hell did that fucking halfwit his him with?”

Theseus winces. “It was a variation of a  _ Flagrante _ curse.”

“Auror Scamander!” A healer bustles in. “I don’t care who you are in England, I have told you, family only.”

“I’m his wife,” Newt blurts.

The healer freezes. “He’s married?”

“Why does it matter?” Theseus asks.

The healer scowls at Theseus, then turns to Newt. “What kind of marriage vows did you have, dearie?”

When Newt doesn’t answer, Theseus does.

The healer’s scowl softens as she listens to him, and sees the protective arms around her shoulders. “Family after all, then?” She asks softly.

Theseus nods.

The healer reaches out and takes Newt’s hand. “Come, dearie. Sit by him.”

Newt ignores the chair next to the bed and perches on the edge, automatically reaching for Percival before freezing and looking at the healer.

The healer nods in encouragement. “He’ll heal faster, with you here. Your marriage vows… you know your magic and his are bound?”

Newt gently lifts Percival’s hand between hers. “Yes.”

“That bond likely saved him, Lady Graves. The combined strength of your magics… this curse should have killed him. With you near, with your magics entwined, he will rest more soundly, and he will heal more quickly. Just staying with him is the best you can do.” 

Newt exhales shakily and nods.

“He’ll recover,” the healer assures her gently as she ducks back out of the room.

Newt finally unclenches her fist, letting the parchment drop to the bed, and releases Percival long enough to shrug out of her jacket and kick her boots off so she can stretch out alongside him in the narrow bed. She reaches up and brushes his hair away from his face, then presses a kiss to his temple before she tucks her face into the crook of his neck and twine her finger through his.

Theseus scoffs.

Newt, having already quite forgotten her brother was there, jerks in surprise.

Theseus rolls his eyes. “You’re as bad as he is. He never told you, did he?”

Newt frowns. “Told me what?”

Theseus groans. “You two idiots deserve each other.”

“Thes?”

Theseus waves vaguely and stomps out of the room. “Send word when he wakes up.”

*

The last thing Percival remembers is searing heat. When he wakes, it’s faded to a feeling like a fever, plus a rather pleasant warmth pressed up against his left side. He blinks awake slowly, and glances down to find Newt’s familiar wild curls spread across his chest. He gently squeezes her hand and she sits up abruptly. He immediately laments the loss. She stares down at him, eyes wide and shocked, for a solid half a minute before she chokes out a sab and throws herself across his chest.

Percival raises his arms to wrap around her shoulders as he gently shushes her. “Easy, dearest. It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright!” Newt sits back up and scowls, green eyes flashing furiously, thumping him none too gently on the chest. “You should have bloody well died!”

“Then you’d be a rich woman,” Percival attempts to joke.

Newt’s scowl deepens. “You are a fucking arse, Percival Graves. But you are  _ my _ fucking arse and I swear to Merlin, if you go and die one me-” Newt’s cut off by a sob.

Percival tugs her back into his chest and lets her cry herself out.

“You can’t,” Newt whispers. “You can’t die. I don’t know what I would… Percy, I…”

“Hush, dearest. I promise to endeavor to live.”

Newt jabs him in the side, then sits back up. “Thes said something, before he left…”

Percival closes his eyes, already certain as to the topic of the comment.

“He asked if you told me something, then called us both idiots.”

Percival’s eyes snap open, hope rising in his chest. “Both?”

“Yes, both,” Newt snaps. “Why?”

Percival slowly, laboriously, sits up and leans forward to grasp Newt’s cheeks gently in his palms. “Because, Newt, your meddling brother knows quite well how utterly in love with you I am, dearest.”

Newt’s jaw drops. “You love me?”

Percival smiles softly and brushes his thumbs over her cheek bones. “How could I not?”

Newt blushes, but smiles shyly. She reaches up and rests one hand over his heart, and loosely grasps one of his wrists with the other hand. “I do too, you know… though I didn’t realize it until yesterday.”

Percival drops his head until his forehead rests against hers. “As much as I hate to admit when Theseus is right…”

Newt sighs. “We’re both idiots.”

Percival edges his lips closer to hers. “Yes.”

Newt closes the scant distance left between them.

From the doorway, Theseus whoops. “Bloody finally!”


End file.
